Hamas has rescinded its agreement to include the 2002 Arab peace initiative in the guidelines for a proposed Palestinian unity government, the party's officials said on Tuesday.

Hamas' refusal to include the initiative caused an uproar within the Fatah party. However, national unity talks are expected to resume when Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas - who supports a unity government, in contrast to most other Fatah leaders - returns to the region.

Hamas officials confirmed that the organization wants to change the clause of the agreement that deals with the Arab peace plan. Hamas does not want the government platform to make an explicit reference to the plan.

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"You can't mention the Arab initiative only," Salah Bardawil, head of Hamas's parliamentary faction, told Haaretz on Tuesday. "The prisoners' document [an earlier proposed blueprint for a unity government] explicitly talks about 'recognizing the Arab source of authority,' while the agreement talks only about the Arab peace initiative. It must be changed and the initiative should be noted in a more general manner."

Hamas says will accept past deals
Another issue that top Fatah officials said was causing the serious
crisis in the unity talks is acceptance of previous agreements signed by the Palestine Liberation Organization, such as the Oslo Accords. The Fatah officials charged that Hamas is not prepared to recognize those agreements.

But Bardawil said that Hamas is not demanding any changes in this clause of the unity government deal reached between Abbas and Haniyeh. As it stands, the deal states that the unity government will honor agreements signed by the PLO that safeguard Palestinian interests.

Similarly, during a meeting in Syria this week, the deputy head of Hamas's political bureau, Moussa Abu Marzuk, told former Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qureia, who was representing Abbas, that Hamas has a few reservations about the Arab peace plan, but would honor the agreements signed by the PLO.

Nevertheless, Abbas associates are fuming over the change in Hamas's position on the Arab peace plan, which they said was a result of pressure from Khaled Meshal, the head of the Hamas political bureau in Damascus. Abbas had planned to present Hamas's agreement to put this plan in the government guidelines as an important achievement.

Fatah officials criticized Hamas leaders in Gaza for giving in to the
dictates of Meshal and his cronies, who they said are taking a harder line than Haniyeh. The officials added that the varying Hamas positions are making it difficult for Abbas to get American support for the unity government.

Fatah split
But even as Fatah officials criticized the split between the Haniyeh
and Meshal camps within Hamas, Fatah itself remained divided over a national unity government.

Palestinian sources said that even two of the officials accompanying Abbas on his trip to meet with U.S. President George Bush in New York on Wednesday - Saeb Erekat and Yasser Abed Rabbo - are not enthusiastic about a unity government.

On the other hand, the Abbas associates who argued that the Bush administration should be more positive about a unity government had kind words for Hamas. They said that while Fatah changed its position almost 30 years after it was founded, Hamas took only six months to agree to insert a reference to the 1967 borders.

The Palestinian sources also said that a meeting between Abbas and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni Tuesday was positive, but did not yield any results.